And to those who hope to argue the success of Fiscal Policy… I point out that we depend on the stupidity of the average American, that they happily spend today what they will have to pay back come tax time. Good thing they don’t realize it!

More towards the end of his life, it looked like Friedman was becoming pretty disillusioned with his own monetarist ideas, at least admitting that it looked impossible to expect a political institution to responsibly manage interest rates/money quantity.

He was practically Austrian by the end, if a recent essay I read credited to him regarding the true monetary nature of silver was indeed written by him.

The irony is that I have long hated the legacy of the conservative Chicago school, the links with Pinochet of Chile, the downsizing of American industrial jobs, etc. the whole Right Wing tilt that came about with greater Class differences in wealth and more economic insecurity but I have to bend a little and think that there is some sort of humor that such a leftwinger as I (pretending to be perhaps?) might sleep in one of the Friedman’s bedrooms when I visit there.

They were friendly people from all accounts while John Kenneth G. had a haughtiness greater in scale than even his tall stature (told to me by an associate while they were in India.) The Galbraith’s hung out in summer nearby over in Vermont I am told.

However dense some of Galbraith’s writing was, I think he had a much firmer understanding of real markets than the simplistic nostrums of Friedman. His “post-industrial market’ ideas are especially understandable in light of the planning that successful corporations need to ‘pre-market’ for success. And govt and industrial planning are needed co-joined. The current meltdown of lack of planning (and regulation) is perhaps due to the Freidman doctrines. Also, I liked Galbraith’s sweet, concise mini-biograph of Keynes he wrote somewhere, proving that he could also write for us more common folk.

My vote is for a regular guest spot for Cass.

While Friedman made important contributions to monetary economics, I am no fan of the Chicago School and have frequently decried Friedman’s libertarian polemics.

I actually don’t own a car, and I never have. Poverty and cost/benefit, although I do drive and like it. I live in a city center in a region with good public transit. Not having a car very definitely limits me socially, but that is primarily because everyone else has adapted to having a car and devoting a quarter of their income stream to that option. I don’t know whether Iook favorably or unfavorably on the decline of personal transportation, but what we will have going forward, speaking metaphorically, will be different than the recent past.

“Trouble is, we do and this is where it brings us.”

What??? You’re going to blame socialist wall street welfare and a CENTRAL bank? What the hell is libertarian about driving interest rates below market level with central bank intervention, creating a socialist, GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ENTITY to subsidize the mortgage market, and then drop fiat money from helicopters across America??

Trouble is, we do and this is where it brings us.